The tragedies of the October war continued relentlessly
into November and December. It left us among the dead, the debris and the crumbling
structures. The smell of putrefaction clung to the fresh morning air. The terror
of the army on every street corner, molestation and even rape became facts of
life.

It left us paralysed - benumbed as a community in a political
and structural vacuum. It also left us with this terrible knowledge that people
are but dispensable numbers: rape and molestation inevitable facts for the warring
parties. It left us bitter, and angry that these gruesome consequences were
even awaited with certain satisfaction as good material for international propaganda
by the "leaders"of the people. The sadism of this situation seemed
the greatest blow to the community. We sat by, watching the Indian military
presence become well entrenched in our land, sea and sky, and Indian political
dominance a creeping reality.

Unlike other analyses that have come up, we do not see
the current crisis as resulting from distinct events that stand on their own
and, therefore, one that is subject to being analysed episodically. As such
we do not consider this war as a catastrophic consequence of a simple misjudgment
on the part of the Tigers or India. Nor do we consider it as a consequence of
the inbuilt fears that the Tigers are presumed to have of democracy and elections.
Contrary to the popular view, we do not think that if the single event of handing
over the 17 L.T.T.E. men had not occurred, every thing would have been fair
and fine for the peace accord, the L.T.T.E., the Tamils and the I.P.K.F.. Though
all these views have elements of truth in them, we agree with those who place
the war in a geopolitical context. However we do not agree that the correct
and methodical interaction of foreign policy institutions or the clever manoeuvring
of foreign policy can simply determine this geopolitical reality in our favour.

All these opinions view history as a chain of events.
Rather, history is an evolutionary process where events are manifestations.
We see this war as a historical legacy of the way social forces within the Tamil
and Sinhalese nations developed and interacted. An analysis of the political
background of the war and Indo-Sri Lankan relations, would entail analysing
not only the geopolitical situation, but also the internal contradictions of
the Tamil and Sinhalese communities. Such a treatment is very important for
us, because many Tamil intellectuals of nationalist leanings see the contradictions,
objectives and interactions within the Tamil nation in a simplified framework
in isolation of southern Sri Lanka. This cloistered view had been one of the
deterrents to constructing a viable nationalist objective.

In this sketch an encompassing view is attempted, within
the framework of historical analysis. However, this does not come in the best
forms of polemical discourse enthralling left intellectuals and Marxist theorists,
but rather breaks into emotional and descriptive scenarios. This has been inevitable
for us, as we are participants in the pain and agony of a nation. This sketch
is attempted principally to bring out into the open the little known side of
our nation (already people are adapting themselves to living with reality, pushing
and smothering the pain into the recesses of memory) and the underlying causative
processes and forces. However, this study is incomplete as no particular force
is dealt with in detail and the sketch draws in broad strokes certain outlines
of the tendencies.

6.2 A Survey of the Background to the

Present Crisis

6.2.1 Mother India: Illusion or Reality

Many in the Tamil community expressed shocked disbelief
in the way the October war was conducted. The ruling classes of the Tamil nation
had always seen India as a patron, an arbitrator, and an advocate of Tamil aspirations.
This perception was not only based on the cultural and emotional links with
southern India, but also on a studied intellectual approach. Ideas such as exploiting
India's great power pretensions as a useful tool for advancing the Tamil separatist
cause, have been put forward by Tamil intellectuals. But is this a correct perception?
What is India's thrust abroad?

6.2.2 India's thrust abroad

It is argued that in the context of power relations
in South Asia, India has some autonomy and its foreign policies may sometimes
even conflict with imperial centres - although it still remains basically dependent.
It has been proposed that the development of Indian capitalism pushes it to
look abroad for markets and resources. This is further enhanced by the perception
of India as a potentially great power. These analyses trace this great power
perception to the colonial period when emerging Indian elites acted as imperial
agents for Britain. Another reason given for India's thrust abroad is
the pre-capitalist social formation in India, and the inability of the local
market to respond to the needs of India's growing industrial power and further
capital accumulation. This can be seen as part of India's diplomatic thrust
in the neighbourhood. In this, those interests of India, that can supply goods
at very competitive prices, would run counter to those of the western countries
and Japan.

Therefore despite the fact that India is in size and
scale a big nation in the region, its influence abroad is impeded by internal
contradictions. Moreover its influence is uneven in the region. For example,
take the case of Sri Lanka, the southern neighbour, and in the north of the
region, Nepal and Bhutan. Nepal and Bhutan are more or less totally integrated
into India economically, and due to their strategic importance (along the northern
border), politically and militarily as well. But Sri Lanka had been able to
circumvent such integration and control. To understand the reasons for the relative
autonomy of Sri Lanka, we have to search the historical roots of Indo-Sri Lankan
relations since the colonial time.

6.2.3 The Colonial past and the evolution
of

Sri Lanka's Economy

During British rule some sections of the Indian elite
assisted in the administration of colonial structures and the imperial capitalist
system, not only in India, but all over the British Raj. In the imperial interests
Sri Lanka was designated a crown colony and received preferential treatment
in the region because of its smallness in size.This rendered it amenable to
control. India's ruling class, because of its relative internal strength and
independence, was always more of a threat to the colonial administration than
the Sri Lankan ruling class. Furthermore, Sri Lanka's geographical position
in the Indian ocean and the possession of a natural harbour at Trincomalee,
made this accommodation and preferential treatment useful for continued control
of the important sea-lanes of the Indian Ocean. Apart from the colonial designs
to subjugate the whole region, internally there was overwhelming consensus on
stubbornly maintaining Sri Lanka's relative autonomy from India. For instance,
the East India Company administration was forced to withdraw the Indian civil
administrators in its service, after agitation by the indigenous population.
This shows a contrasting experience to that of countries like Nepal and Bhutan
where Indian civil administrators and migrant traders were an instrument in
controlling the indigenous people.

There is another side to this story of opposition to
Indian influence however. In the mid-nineteenth century the colonial administration
brought in large numbers of impoverished Indian Tamil peasantry from South India
to work the plantations in Sri Lanka, when the local Sinhalese had refused to
be incorporated into the plantation sector. These Indian Tamil labourers were
brought in as indentured labour in conditions of near slavery. The Indian Tamil
labour who built up the plantation sector and who, even to this day, remain
the backbone of the country's economy, were simply grafted on to Sri Lankan
society by their colonial masters and were rejected as aliens by the local population.
In post-independence Sri Lanka their situation deteriorated. They were disenfranchised
and became the most exploited and oppressed social group within the country.
Unfortunately the growing contradiction between the local subsistence agriculture
and the plantation sector manifested itself in the most fierce antagonism towards
this under privileged group. Unscrupulous political elements used this contradiction
to their advantage by portraying this dispossessed poverty stricken group as
an arm of Indian expansionism. Even opposition to Indian supremacy in the region
was expressed by victimising this minority group.

The local ruling classes, both indigenous Tamil and Sinhalese
however, had an upward mobility during colonial rule. The Tamils especially
in the lower rungs of the civil service; The Sinhalese in trading, small scale
plantations, and satellite services to the plantation sector as well as in the
civil services. In fact though there were prosperous Indian and Moor traders
in Sri Lanka, they were viewed with intense antagonism by the Sinhalese trading
class. The real content of this anti-Indianism was that the local ruling classes
did not want another group that was exercising control.

6.2.4 Post Colonial Sri Lanka: Rise of

Narrow Nationalism

Unlike in many other small states in the region, Colonial
Sri Lanka occupied a defined place in British imperial designs in the South
Asian region, and the Sri Lankan ruling class had a competitive relationship
with Indian counterparts who came into the island. Furthermore, the historical
development of nationalist movements in Sri Lanka, showed that, though their
anti-colonial ideologies were complementary to and derived inspiration from
the Indian nationalist movements, they had also an underlying contradiction
with them. This contradiction arose from the content of nationalism itself,
which was based on the economy of the ruling classes of Sri Lanka. Colonial
penetration had made the Sri Lankan economy totally integrated and fully absorbed
into the imperial economic system. Plantations became the main economic activity
of this island. The rising middle classes of the Sinhalese and the Tamil communities
were integrated into servicing the colonial economy and administration. Therefore,
though anti-colonial struggles were waged, and nationalism was espoused by the
middle classes, the thrust was limited. The middle class had no strong economic
base to rely on, except the colonial economy; nor did it have indigenous economic
roots to compete with the colonial power. Thus the anti-colonialism of this
class and its anger against domination were only emotional. Its link with the
nation and the people took the form of cultural and religious identity. Its
alienation made it necessary for its assertion as part of the broad sweep of
the people. This assertion was articulated in terms of overwhelming enthusiasm
for the emotional content of culture and past history. Its real economic contradictions,
for example on the Sinhalese side, lay in its competition with the Tamil middle
class and Indian trading class for colonial spill-overs. Therefore the contradictions
between the rising Sinhalese middle class on the one hand and the Tamil middle
class and Indian trading class on the other, made Sinhalese nationalism contain
seeds of anti-Tamil, anti-Indian sentiments. Excellent studies on this subject
have been done by Kumari Jayawardana.

In post-colonial Sri Lanka, under the system of parliamentary
democracy, this class aimed at domination of its competitors from the Tamil
community for the economic and political control of the newly independent state.
Sinhalese chauvinism played on the cultural connection between the Tamils of
Sri Lanka and the Tamils of South India and created fears of Tamils conniving
with India to submerge the Sinhalese nation and destroy its language and religion.
The Sinhalese chauvinists mythified their role in preserving the Buddhist religion,
the Sinhalese race, and the language, and with this ideology they were able
to appeal to a broad base, across class, caste and region. Thus it became the
most useful ideology for a ruling class, who sought power through parliament.
On the other hand, Tamil nationalism, though of similar class base and aspiration,
could not attain to power in the independent state. Thus incipient anti-Sinhalese
sentiments could never take the offensive in a concrete form.

Therefore, to sum up, for the ruling classes of both
communities consolidation of power depended on the espousal of these narrow
nationalist ideologies, and because, since independence "state power"
rested in the hands of the Sinhalese ruling class, Sinhalese Buddhist chauvinism
became institutionalised, over a period of time.

6.2.5 Sinhalese Chauvinism and Tamil Nationalism

This presentation does not provide the scope to digress
into a detailed account of the history of Tamil nationalism. We instead concentrate
on certain aspects which throw light on the nature of the forces leading to
the particular history of the Tamils.

There was a basic difference in the material base of
the ruling classes of the two communities. The plantation sector, the mainstay
of the colonial economy, was physically placed in the South and it opened up
many avenues for the Sinhalese ruling class to enter into the colonial capitalist
system. There was no economic activity of comparable dimension introduced in
the Tamil areas by the colonial rulers, that could stimulate indigenous economic
enterprises and create wealth. Therefore the rising Tamil middle classes found
economic prosperity by servicing the colonial administration in the South and
elsewhere. The Tamil middle class sought to prosper by the assiduous pursuance
of British education; and thus serviced the lower rungs of the colonial bureaucracy.
They produced professionals and personnel to service other civil institutions,
such as the schools. They were a class created by British colonialism.

This colonial legacy ensured their position as an intermediary
controlling group even in majority Sinhalese areas of the South. This privileged
position produced an overblown psychology of superiority. However the underpinning
material base consisted of economic activity totally under the control of the
state structure, and dependent on the South. This weak and paradoxical position
was to produce both the impetus as well as the impediments to the growth of
Tamil nationalism.

After independence the state gradually pursued overtly
discriminatory policies against the Tamils. As Sinhalese Buddhist chauvinism
became institutionalised, the pervasive influence of this ideology touched every
aspect of Tamil life-employment, land, education, and industrial development.
The discriminatory policies eroded the mainstay of the Tamil middle class's
economic base. This increasing threat to their livelihood in the state structure
and in the South, and the feeling that they were being pushed around and treated
as second class citizens, frustrated and angered the middle class Tamils. However,
being economically dependent, they could not be free. Thus they continued to
be accommodating, while suppressing their bitterness and anger. The political
parties of this class harnessed this anger to consolidate their power. They
also reflected this paradox of conflict between their emotions and the economy.
Their rhetoric was fiery and appealing to the consciousness of the Tamils, who
considered themselves intellectually superior to the Sinhalese. But the political
practice was one of bargaining with the Sinhalese leadership for parliamentary
power sharing- reflecting their dependency in fundamental areas..

However the most important aspects of national
oppression, such as the question of the state aided land colonisation of Tamil
lands by Sinhalese, and the encroachment into Tamil fishing areas by marauding
Sinhalese fishermen with state patronage, were hardly identified as the primary
issues by the nationalist leadership of the T.U.L.F.. These issues were simply
exploited to raise rhetorical cries in parliament about national oppression.
In fact there was no attempt to mobilise and take forward those poorer sections
of the Tamil community whose very existence was threatened by these activities
of the state. Thus they ignored the erosion of the material base of the broad
masses of the Tamil people and concentrated on a few problems of the Tamil ruling
class. The Sinhalese leadership was fully immersed in its chauvinistic ideology,
which was intolerant of any real power sharing with the Tamils. Invariably,
up to the 1970s, the Sinhalese parties had to rely on some participation of
Tamil nationalists in forming governments and this created an illusion among
the Tamils regarding power sharing. In 1970 the S.L.F.P. came to power with
an absolute majority and thus exposed the Tamil leadership's parliamentary political
limitations in parliamentary politics. Discrimination and oppression worsened
over the 1970s Passive protests by Tamil nationalists were quelled violently
with the use of state power, and worse still, from 1977 onwards, anti-Tamil
mob-violence (euphemistically called "race riots") was periodically
let loose, at increasing frequency.

The failure of the Tamil national leadership to get anything
from the Sinhalese ruling class through parliament was in contradiction with
the rhetoric of anger and the slogans of valour they were feeding the electorate.
As a consequence of this a sense of frustration and bitterness was created among
the people. And as brutal mob violence was the reply to non-violence, Tamil
nationalism no longer confined itself to a class but reached out to all sectors
of the people across class, caste, and regional barriers. Sinhalese chauvinist
oppression became the objective common denominator. Anger and frustration at
this ignominy and threat to life brought a binding emotion and a feeling of
togetherness in the community. The youth who were most affected by the discriminatory
policies (such as media wise standardisation in higher education and the quota
system in employment) demanded a more autonomous life and voiced the anger of
the people..

The youth and the more radical elements felt that the
parting of the ways had come and that coexistence with the Sinhalese was no
longer possible. Thus the Tamil bourgeois leadership had to adopt the slogan
of "Tamil Eelam” - the cry for a separate state-for their political existence.
But they had no concrete programme towards this objective. Of course the Tamil
nationalist leadership could not pull the Eelam rabbit out of the parliamentary
hat. The leadership had put forward a cry that they knew could never be fulfilled
in a constitutional way, and Eelam had never been practicable with their class's
economical integration and dependency on the South. Moreover they failed to
discuss these realities with the people and give them a more viable alternative.
They kept the people under an illusion, by such slogans calling the T.U.L.F.
leader Chelvanayagam the Mujibur of Eelam, and even hinted at taking up arms
from the election platforms. Critics of these slogans were called traitors to
the "cause". However little progress was made inside or outside parliament
apart from the T.U.L.F. leadership's praising the President as the greatest
democrat in South Asia.At the same time the Tamil people faced the 1977 race
riots and they had to run away, again hunted. The T.U.L.F. was impotent. As
a result the sense of betrayal was acute amongst the youth and the people.

The Tamil national struggle became increasingly isolated
and separatist through the intransigence of the Sinhalese nationalists, in whom
the power of the state resided. But it would be wrong to view Tamil nationalism,
even though the cry of secession was raised after three decades of increasing
oppression, as defensive in every aspect; or that it became narrow nationalist
and aggressive only after the ascendence of the militancy.(Tamil nationalists
like their counterparts, had a sense of superiority. Their historical build
up from the feudal past was equally mythical and romantic. They were feeding
their electorates and the youth with images of valour, preservation of race
and language, and a history heavily loaded with anti-Sinhalese, pro-Indian ingredients.

Tamil politicians often drew images from history harking
back to the "glorious" days of the Tamil kings and the days of the
Chola empire in South India. They contrasted the antiquity and purity of the
Tamil language with the more recent development of the Sinhalese language, scoffing
at the latter as a derivative of other Indian languages. They attributed the
high levels of literacy and education amongst Tamils to their superior intelligence
as opposed to the Sinhalese whom, they claimed, were lazy and less intellectually
inclined. The anger that the old guard Tamil leadership felt against Sinhalese
domination was due to their perception of themselves as rulers in the past now
enslaved by an "alien" people.

Though nationalism was meaningful due to the threat to
existence under the Sri Lankan state, its narrowness, violent rhetoric and bigoted
imagery were the reactionary elements that were to remain with the nation. The
militants were not the initiators; they were the continuation of this history.
The ideology in its totality, goes to the credit of the "moderate"
and "middle of the road" nationalists, who were the initiators of
this narrowness.

The extreme narrowness of their ideology prevented them
from organising at grass roots level around the real issues of national oppression.
They whipped up nationalist fervour from election platforms, repeatedly evoking
these reactionary images and sentiments. The people were not politically conscientious
or prepared for the kind of events to come. Their political consciousness was
simply taken up to a secessionist stage, just for the political existence of
a party and its need to get into parliament,

Another serious defect of Tamil nationalism was its regional
bias. The nationalist leadership even within the ruling class was confined to
the educated middle class which was mainly from the Jaffna peninsula. This group,
most affected by state discrimination in education and employment, unfortunately
became the leading force in the struggle.

The Eastern Province, despite its extreme underdevelopment
in comparison to Jaffna and the South, remained a rich agricultural area, self
sufficient in major crops such as rice. Some sections of the ruling class in
the Eastern Province had their base in large land holdings and were not as dependent
on the South or on state patronage as the Jaffna Tamils. Therefore they responded
to the state's oppressive measures rather differently from the peninsula Tamils.
Historically, the two regions developed in different directions with regard
to economic and social organisation and cultural practice. Further, the Jaffna
Tamils acted on behalf of the state as civil administrators and officials in
the Eastern Province and established their dominance. As a result the Batticaloa
Tamils learned to regard the peninsula Tamils and their motives with deep suspicion.
All these factors contributed to Tamil nationalism taking on primarily a Jaffna
face. And when Sinhalese chauvinism revealed its most sinister motives through
its policies such as the disenfranchisement of Tamil plantation workers and
the colonisation of Tamil lands with Sinhalese settlers, the Tamil leadership
offered no tangible way forward.

After independence the successive Sinhalese governments
created a policy of land alienation in areas of Tamil concentration to Sinhalese
settlers. Bands of settlers were brought into these Tamil villages with state
patronage. Over the years this changed the whole demography of some areas in
the Eastern Province such as the Ampara District, the strategically important
town of Trincomalee and the villages surrounding it. Tamils who were the majority
in all these areas have now become minorities. It has even tilted the electoral
balance further in favour of the Sinhalese. The hill country Tamils lived concentrated
on tea estates, surrounded by Sinhalese villages. Geographically, they were
separated from the native Sri Lankan Tamils who lived in the North and the East.
All along the indigenous Tamils shunned them socially, mainly because of their
lower class and caste backgrounds. The first Sinhalese government disenfranchised
the Indian Tamils. Some sections of the upperclass Sri Lankan Tamils also viewed
the Indian Tamils as a potential threat in the future and supported the move.
The more moderate or liberal Tamil politicians were at best indifferent to the
plight of the plantation labour. Their issues were taken on often to bolster
their propaganda war. This trend continued even when the militant movements
took over the nationalist mantle.

6.2.6 Sinhalese Chauvinism and Indo-Sri
Lanka

Relations: Control
or Coexistence ?

As we saw earlier, Sinhalese chauvinism was essentially
anti- Indian. Such factors made Sri Lanka keep itself at the peripheries of
the Indian ambit, and pushed the Sinhalese ruling class to further ties with
countries outside the Indian orbit, particularly with the industrialized West
and China.

However, these ties were never developed to the levels
of being antagonistic to India. All Sri Lankan ruling parties, before 1977,
co-existed with a tactical understanding of Indian aspirations. In hindsight
it can be seen that India also did not push its influence on its smaller southern
neighbour. For India to play a more aggressive role there would have to have
been one of two causes: either a danger to its strategic defence or the needs
of its expanding economy.

Also a more aggressive Indian role seems to have been
curtailed by its own perceptions. The plight of the Indian Tamil plantation
workers in Sri Lanka who were viewed as India's fifth column by the Sinhalese,
is a case in point. When the Sinhalese racist parties wished to repatriate the
Indian plantation workers back to India, the Indian Government signed the Sirima-Shastri
Pact without any reservation. The Sirima-Shastri Pact repatriated more than
500,000 plantation workers, many against their will, breaking up communities
and even families in the process. The Sinhalese perception that India will use
these workers to gain a foothold in Sri Lanka is mistaken, because the Indian
state is conditioned by the fact that they are mere workers and not possible
rulers.

6.2.7 Sinhalese Nationalism and

Sri Lankan Governments

Sinhalese supremacy was the basis on which especially
S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike's S.L.F.P. came to power in 1956. But economically it
proposed a state capitalist structure and a welfarist and reformist policy.
Though the programme itself contained some egalitarian principles, because of
the Sinhalese chauvinistic bias, the Tamil population was politically and economically
affected. The Bandaranaike-Chelvanayagam pact - one of the most generous and
rational packages to be offered by chauvinist governments - had to be abandoned
due to protest from the U.N.P. with the connivance of the Buddhist clergy. The
course was set for deteriorating communal relations.

The economy continued in the same pattern with various
modifications - but Sinhalese chauvinism still remained the dominant ideology,
continuing its oppression of the Tamils. A break in the economic system, and
change in political thinking came in 1977 when the U.N.P., with J.R. Jayewardene
at the helm, swept into power mainly on an economic programme of free market
policies. It was put forward as a panacea for the evils of the welfare capitalism
of Mrs.Bandaranaike with its stagnation, queues, unemployment etc. Though the
U.N.P. manifesto adopted a more conciliatory tone on the national question to
go with its capitalist open economy programme, its political existence seemed
again to rest on a base whose dominant ideology was Sinhalese-Buddhist chauvinism.
At the time of the elections the overriding economic concerns seemed to obscure
the ideological underpinnings,but the dormant chauvinism showed up with the
eruption of the 1977 race riots.

The alienation of Tamil nationalists, increasing discrimination,
and violent oppression of the Tamil community, had created the conditions for
the phase of armed struggle to be born. J.R., a die-hard, pro-American politician,
developed pro-Western economic programmes and alliances, and, in his attempt
to smash the Tamil resistance, sought the help of Western allies. The United
States' good offices brought in Israel as a military advisor, and a V.O.A. base
was established in Chilaw, disseminating American propaganda. Trincomalee harbour
was made available, ostensibly for refuelling facilities for American ships,
and more ambitious plans were rumoured.

These moves were perceived by India as openly subverting
its interests. The U. S. and the West saw in the Sri Lankan state a staunch
ally and an important check to India's growth as a regional power, especially
after India's ties with the Soviet Union were strengthened. The strategic importance
of Trincomalee, the natural harbour, underscored the superpowers' interests.

6.2.8 1983 - A Turning Point

1983 was the watershed for local and regional forces
- for the Sinhalese chauvinist state, the Tamil militants, for Indian interests;
revolutionary politics and militarist tendencies. The June 83 mob violence broke
the unstable equilibrium at which contradictory forces were interacting, struggling
and evolving. It set in motion at a tremendous pace, the process that was to
lead eventually to the October 1987 war. The destruction and chaos seem nothing
but a natural outcome. When the July 1983 mob violence against Tamils occurred
as a government engineered plan, India voiced its "humanitarian" concern.

For the Sinhalese ruling class which had always feared
the espousal of the Tamil cause by India, these indications were seen in a paranoidal
manner. And the mainstream press and Sinhalese Buddhist organisations fanned
anti-Indian propaganda.

India discerned a tangible advantage in using Tamil aspirations
for its own interests. The Indian government saw the armed liberation movements
as good vehicles for the destabilisation of the Sri Lankan state, with the aim
of checking the threats to its strategic interests,posed by Sri Lanka's moves.
Overtures were made by India offering to assist militarily the armed Tamil movements.
Though the Indian government's decision was never openly acknowledged, training
camps were being set up in India. However, India gave its political support
to the parliamentary party of the Tamils - the T.U.L.F..

In the meantime, Indian assistance was the talk of the
living rooms of expatriate Tamils in London, New York and Boston. The Indian
military assistance gave confidence to the expatriate community that a separate
state for the Tamils in Sri Lanka was a historical possibility, and a respectable
cause. From afar, they were ready to invest for a future. Standing order support
started to snowball for the Eelam cause. Luncheons, and dinner parties were
held to raise support for the armed groups. Those who raised funds for movements
became community leaders among the expatriates. Discussions were addressed by
political front-men from all the groups. The armed groups became monetarily
more sound and politically more important. Expatriate big wigs breezed in and
out of New Delhi and Madras, seeking appointments with Indira Gandhi, and talking
to Prabakaran and Uma Maheswaran in separate rooms. They were surprised, but
not disturbed by their inability to get the latter two into one room. Sri Lankan
Tamil platform speakers did the rounds in Tamil Nadu. An expatriate doctor from
the U.. S arrived with the Eelam flag designed by him and a commissioned recording
of the Tamil Eelam national anthem. Indian assistance spurred recruitment, and
swelled the ranks of all groups, thus bloating unnaturally the rather small
and infantile politico-military structures of the groups. The sweep of Indian
military assistance created shifts in political opinions and the class character
of the struggle became well established. It was after the '83 riots and Indian
help that taking up arms became popular with middle class youth. Though the
ideology of nationalism was that of the middle classes, and the rhetoric was
out of their consciousness, the harsh life underground, and the persecution
by the police did not make it appealing to the youth of this class in the early
days. Before 1983, the rank and file of the groups were young men mostly from
the oppressed and deprived sections of the community. However, 1983s gruesome
mob violence, the enormous suffering of the people and Indian assistance, tipped
the balance. In the process armed actions became the total focus of the struggle
among the groups and, in general, within the community. It unlinked political
accountability from military action, the fundamental experience of all people's
struggles. Liberation struggle became synonymous with armed action. And politics
took a back seat in the community and in the movements. But in India's interests,
the destabilisation of Sri Lanka could not be better organized than through
these politically stunted organizations. India organized the aid through the
R.A.W. (Research and Analysis Wing), and it was mainly in the form of training.
An empirical analysis of R.A.W.'s activities shows the trends in the political
thinking of the Indian state vis-a-vis the Tamil militant groups.

6.2.9 The R.A.W. and the Tamil Militant
Groups

The first group that was chosen for training was the
T.E.L.O.. The T.E.L.O. at that time was a handful of persons without a clear
cut organisational base or theoretical perspective. With Indian assistance the
T.E.L.O. became a front line armed group. Recruitment in Tamil Eelam commenced
on a massive scale. Once the training took off, the T.E.L.O. launched some daring
and successful armed raids on the Sri Lankan security forces.

The scramble for military training offered by India intensified.
Five militants movements out of many were chosen by the R.A.W. and training
was offered separately as separate packages. The L.T.T.E. had always felt that
they had the moral right to leadership because they had sacrificed much in performing
many armed actions, and thus had suffered the most for the "cause".
Moreover, their narrow nationalist ideology could not accommodate the existence
of other movements. They as a group denied the historical contribution of other
movements to the cause, and felt cheated when they were not chosen as the sole
beneficiary of the Indian assistance. This was one among the many reasons that
laid the foundations for their decision later to eliminate physically the competing
groups. Nevertheless the L.T.T.E. did not let its bitterness jeopardise its
relations with the R.A.W. or India. They, like the other movements, solicited
assiduously the military aid on offer. Moreover, the L.T.T.E. and all the other
major movements shored up their support by meshing their own with Tamil Nadu's
politics. Until the splits came into the open, all the movements were generally
referred to as "Tigers". But it was predominantly, the L.T.T.E.'s
image of glamour and heroism that caught the popular imagination in Tamil Nadu.

One did expect other movements like the E.P.R.L.F. and
the E.R.O.S. with left-wing leanings, to be more cautious about the Indian military
training, especially as they had criticised the L.T.T.E.'s military strategy.
But the reality was that the atmosphere of total focus was on military and armed
action. This proved too much of a pressure for these movements as well. They
lacked well organised politico-military strategies of their own to counter this
militaristic focus; and they also lacked the conceptual depth that was required
to handle the reality of India, and assess the pros and cons of Indian help.
Therefore they, like the others, surrendered to the Indian plan wholesale. Their
fault was not their receiving of military assistance, but their lack of a coherent
structure, a political theory, and popular base which made them unable to control
India's dominance and keep the initiative in their own hands. Thus, the slow
but steady surrender to India became their destiny.

Therefore when we analyse the level of influence and
penetration of the R.A.W. into the movements, one aspect is clear. It is that
its influence is far reaching in all the movements. But the degree of penetration
varied. The T.E.L.O was fully penetrated. Others were able to keep a fair distance
from this secret service. the E.P.R.L.F. and the EROS had an ambivalent relationship
with it. The L.T.T.E. was the most resistant to R.A.W.influence among all five
groups. The Tigers who had evolved with the political history of the popular
nationalist movement in the homeland, had already built a tightly knit centralized
armed structure with fanatical dedication to the cause of their movement, and,
most of all, their leader. Therefore, though the L.T.T.E. was a reactionary
and stifling phenomenon, the R.A.W. found it difficult to penetrate it fully
or to destabilise its structure.

The R.A.W. offered training in separate packages on different
terms to the different groups, and thus not only intensified intergroup rivalry,
but also ensured a diffused build up of trained personnel, so that no one movement
should get ahead of the others militarily. The dangerous and sad aspect of this
was that, using the antagonisms between groups to its advantage, the R.A.W.
collected information on the movements from each other. India also saw to it
that no movement could establish tangible connections with liberation struggles
elsewhere or with other countries.

The conclusions we could derive from the above observations
are that, though the RAW and India wanted the growth of armed Tamil movements,
it was planned in such a way that none of them would be able to supersede the
other, and ultimately pose a threat to India or to Sri Lanka. They penetrated
the most politically naive of the movements, the T.E.L.O., and used them as
their agents. Their competitive offerings in action offset their greater internal
rivalries and fragmented support base.

One gathers from all available reports that the R.A.W.'s
objective was to use the militant movements to exert pressure on the Sri Lankan
state to concede some of India's interests, together with some devolution to
the Tamils. Abortive instance of the latter was the Thimpu talks of 1985, where
the militants were said to have been "frog marched" to the talks by
the R.A.W., and the proposals of 19th December 1986. What was on offer was a
far cry from the militants' stated objective of Eelam- a separate Tamil state.
The effect of the R.A.W.'s involvement on the social and political consciousness
of the Tamils was an unmitigated disaster.

6.2.10 Indian Training, the Nationalist Struggle

of the Tamils and the Sri Lankan State

The Indian military training saw to it that the movements
became more successful in containing the armed forces.On the other hand, the
Sri Lankan government with the loss of control of the North, sought to chip
away at the nationalist argument, and the territorial integrity of the Tamils
and thereby make Tamil Eelam a worthless claim. They made moves in the East,
the more fertile parts of Tamil Eelam, and escalated colonization in an effort
to change the demography of the region. From amongst the Sinhalese colonizers
they also built up such paramilitary corps as the home guards, who began to
carry out acts of violence against the indigenous Tamils. This started a frontier
type of war, especially in the Trincomalee district, and resulted in brutal
murders of Tamils and created conditions for a life of terror in the East. The
L.T.T.E. in response could not mount an organised defence of the indigenous
Tamils, but carried out retaliatory raids not only on the colonizers but even
on traditional Sinhalese villages outside the Tamil homelands committing brutal
acts of murder and arson. The restrained slogans of pre 1983-L.T.T.E., were
abandoned in favour of their instinctive emotional slogans.

Furthermore, the greater sophistication
of the liberation movements' armed activities, tied up the Sri Lankan government
head to foot in a destructive war which also crippled it economically.

6.2.11 National Consensus: A Facade

Though many considered the period after Indian military
aid as one of progress in the Tamil nationalist struggle - the wresting of control
of the northern district within a mere three years - this apparent advance and
triumph is falsified by other aspects of the struggle. The Eastern province,
the other area of Tamil concentration, had remained for a long time outside
the sphere of Tamil nationalism. The Batticaloa Tamils and other Eastern province
Tamils were reluctant to join a struggle that was Jaffna dominated.

The growing entrenchment of the Sri Lankan military
in the East, and increasing the colonization, rendered the Eastern situation
more complex; the lack of vision on the part of the leading group, the L.T.T.E.,
whose Eastern front was small seemed to have handed the Easterners on a platter
to the brutality of Sri Lankan S.T.F. and Homeguards, when the North was relatively
trouble free. This brought in further division and increased the basis of prejudice
between the North and the East, besides enhancing the anger and frustration
in the East at Northern hegemony and step motherly treatment. This shook the
cohesion that seemed to have developed after the 1983 anti-Tamil mob violence.

The development of the northern front occurred at the
expense of many fundamental tasks of nation building. The blind spot in the
concept of the Tamil nation was the question of two large sections of the Tamil
speaking people - the Muslims or the Islamic Tamils and the hill country (plantation)
Tamils. Tamil nationalism was the ideology of the Tamils of Sri Lanka. Historically,
it had very tenuous links with the ideology of the Islamic or hill country Tamils
of Sri Lanka.

The case of the Islamic Tamils spotlights the weakness
of Tamil nationalism with clarity. They are a grouping with a unique economic,
socio-political structure, and cultural characteristics. Large sections of them
live in the East, with pockets of them well entrenched all over Sri Lanka, but
isolated from each other. The cohesive factor binding them is Islam, not Tamil.
Not only do they have historical contradictions specific to themselves with
the Sinhalese, but have suffered during anti-Tamil "race riots" as
well.

Though the slogans and programmes of all movements paid
lip service to the rights of Muslims, there has never been a concrete programme
to realise their goals, or the articulation of their needs and objectives during
the process of the struggle. What has been proclaimed is a programme designed
by the Tamils for the Muslims. There are immense contradictions and prejudices
between Tamils and Muslims, which should have been handled during the years
of struggle, a common basis built and an organic cohesion produced. What we
have is tokenism, some tenuous slogans, a token presence of Muslims in the movements
and the imposition of the hegemony of the Tamils (especially peninsula Tamils)
which led to increasing contradictions. Therefore the advance of the Northern
front was a facade. Internally,the inner core of the nation was cleaved, and
many sections were inarticulate, isolated and in disarray. This situation was
successfully used by the Sri Lankan government to increase the animosity between
the Tamils and Muslims by even arming small groups of Muslim youths to escalate
the conflict.

Not only was the nation cleaved on a regional basis,
but also the intensified inter-group rivalries, ultimately culminated in the
L.T.T.E. annihilating group after group with brutality unparalleled in the history
of liberation struggles. This led the community to be broken into dissenting
segments. Their discontent and hatred were reduced to sullen silence by the
terror of the L.T.T.E. and other leading movements. We were not only losing
on the home front, but there was a slow and steady erosion of international
support, as brutalities within and between groups and against Sinhalese were
on the increase.

One detrimental aspect of Indian assistance was found
in all movements, especially in those where armed actions formed the total axis
(like the Tigers and the T.E.L.O.). In them the military machinery grew out
of proportion to the political structure The structures were neither dependent
nor connected to the people of the land. And there was hardly any accountability
to the people. This lack of accountability was partly the reason why movements
like the Tigers could pursue brutal supremacist struggles, while those like
the P.L.O.T.E. and the T.E.L.O. indulged in large scale torture and murder of
dissidents with impunity.

The Tigers not only brutally eliminated other movements,
but they also suppressed any other opinion among the people. All peoples organisations
were terrorised into toeing the line by the power of the gun. Very soon many
civilian organisations such as the Jaffna mothers' front, trade unions, citizens'
committees, teachers' unions and the local press that were all started through
the independent initiative of the people, were either suppressed or appropriated
by the L.T.T.E.. Though the L.T.T.E. seemed to have ascended to dominance, it
was not an organic growth. It was achieved by terror.

Although all movements talked of India only as a rear
base, none of them inclusive of the L.T.T.E., could establish any real autonomy
from India organisationally. This was principally due to the fact that none
of them seriously considered de-linking themselves from India, and building
alternative structures, organising the people towards self-sufficiency-economically
or socially or politically - to at least a limited extent. This dependency afforded
India scope to use a carrot and stick method with Tamil militant groups in its
political and diplomatic manoeuvres with the Sri Lankan government. From Thimpu
to the 29 July Peace Accord, the Tamil movements had no autonomy.

6.2.12 Negotiation: Anathema

The seemingly successful period of the Tamil militant
groups was interspersed with armed actions against Sinhalese villages as a reprisal
to the state's activity in Tamil areas. This led to a Sinhalese chauvinist backlash
and gave a greater momentum to the forces of reaction within the southern political
scene. The resurgence of the J.V.P., the rise of the M.E.P. and the chauvinistic
tilt of the S.L.F.P. are classic examples of how narrow nationalism became a
relevant ideology despite the onward march of the country towards capitalist
progress for almost a decade. Due to the increasing neocolonialist penetration
and dependency under the Jayewardene government, the Sinhalese nation was experiencing
a disintegration of social structures, relations and values. This coupled with
Sinhalese anger at the government's inability to smash the L.T.T.E., resulted
in a resurgence of petit bourgeois militancy. The content of this new militancy
was narrow nationalism, romanticism and the glorification of the past and traditional
feudal values. The remarkable rise of the J.V.P. on the populist crest in recent
times, signals the revival of narrow nationalism with a new vigour.

Though it is apparent that a rational approach to the
national crisis lay in finding a political solution between the leaderships
of both communities and thus reducing the possibility of Indian involvement,
the Government caught in the trap of its own ideology, could envisage participation
in negotiations only from a position of strength vis-a-vis the Tigers. That
is why negotiations set up at the dictates of India and pressure from the international
community, were a failure. And the state continued to build up its military
potential.

As the first step, the Sri Lankan state launched its
first offensive to wrench control of the North. The defence of the Tamils was
weakened by the internal killings, which made it difficult for the L.T.T.E.
to sustain the fight and it had to withdraw, losing its control over the crucial
border areas, and the land connection with the East. Though the L.T.T.E. still
had its bases and moved fairly freely, its earlier position of free access was
heavily curtailed. The Tiger control zone shrunk to the peninsula, north of
Elephant-Pass. This success gave a psychological boost to the Sri Lankan security
forces. A military solution and negotiation from a position of strength were
becoming a reality for the Sri Lankan state while India's December 19th proposals
were on the table. This was a heavy blow to the Tigers who also would have preferred
a position of strength before any negotiation. The Sri Lankan state started
its relentless pressure on the Tamil support base. An economic blockade was
imposed and sporadic aerial bombardment of so called Tiger camps preluded the
final offensive - the so called Operation Liberation.

As the time bomb exploded in the commercial heartland
of Colombo on 21 April 1987, the conquest of the Jaffna peninsula was on the
cards - the ensuing frenzy of the Sinhalese-chauvinist platforms demanded it.

6.2.13 Operation Liberation or The June War

On the surface it looked a success for the Sri Lankan
state. It had smashed a stronghold of the Tigers, the vanguard area of Tamil
nationalism - Vadamaratchi. But the war itself and the manner in which it was
conducted brought about an international outcry. India stepped up its "moral"
pressure, and, by a show of strength rather than by physical invasion, aborted
the final Sri Lankan onslaught on the heavily populated Jaffna city and its
hinterland. Sri Lanka's allies threatened economic sanctions and demanded a
political solution. On the Tamil side, the L.T.T.E. and the Tamil nationalist
cause were never in such a defensive position. The Tiger control zone had been
whittled down to a corner of the Jaffna peninsula.

On the other hand, India had never found a more
opportune time for the offer of its "good" offices. It offered the
Sri Lankan government the final package, put in clear cut terms its strategic
needs, reiterated the sovereignty of Sri Lanka and pushed the solution down
the throats of the Tigers. To the world at large, it took away the image of
Indian expansionism and portrayed India as a genuine "peace keeper".
To the war weary Tamil community, peace seemed a sweet reality.

6.2.14 The Peace Accord

When the Peace Accord was signed,
there was euphoria in the Tamil community. But the L.T.T.E. could not rationalize
the Accord to its cadres. The Tiger leadership had been pushed into accepting
it.

But such a position was taken while the Tigers
were at their lowest and in their most defensive position. The Tiger leadership
had erred partly because of certain misconceptions in constructing their relationship
with India. They had surmised that India's political aspirations in the region
would cause it to look for agents for the destabilisation of pro-Western Sri
Lanka. They had openly spoken on platforms about the Tamil struggle and their
"Movement" having given this opening for India into Sri Lanka, and
said that Tamil Eelam as a separate state would continue to be friendly to India
and thus ensure the existence of India's control over south Sri Lanka. This
perception was based on some ideas prevalent amongst Tamil intellectuals. With
this perception they could not grasp the reality behind India's continuous reiteration
of the fact that it respected the territorial integrity and unity of Sri Lanka.

Some Western analysts saw India's opposition to a separate
linguistic state as stemming from a fear that it would give impetus to nationalist
movements within its own borders. Though one cannot deny that this is an important
aspect of India's perception, it is more important to analyse it in terms of
the economic and strategic defence needs of the Indian ruling class.

Though India found the pro-Western defence alliances
of Sri Lanka detrimental to its interests, the free economic policies of the
Sri Lankan government were in fact a boon to the interests of Indian capital.
As we mentioned earlier the development of capitalism in India was stimulating
it to look abroad for markets, especially in the South Asian region. To compete
with Japan, the West, and the newly industrialised countries India needed to
modernise and refine its technology and its management and marketing techniques.
Moreover, the big capitalists of India (such as Tata and Birla) were expanding
their business interests at an international level and linking up with big multinational
companies. Already India had made sizable investments in Sri Lanka's Free Trade
Zone and its banking sector. The suggestion that Sri Lanka might become what
a Hong Kong is for China, is not so far from the truth when we take into consideration
the above facts. Therefore, the maintenance of a stable united Sri Lanka with
policies that satisfy India's economic expansion and defence requirements, would
be India's objective. Thus, it is not surprising that in the Peace Accord, the
letters and annexures which deal with Indian interests are well defined in minute
detail, while the part dealing with several key issues of the national question,
is vague and given only in broad outline. On the Sri Lankan side, one could
rationally view the Peace Accord as affording J.R. Jayewardene a solution or
at least an escape from the grip of chauvinism, giving foreign investment a
spur and the economy a truly capitalist impetus. However, it was not to be so.

However, Sri Lanka was to be continually confounded by
the paradox that existed between its ideology and the economy. Though the economic
programme was capitalist, its political existence depended on a reactionary
ideology that was anti-Tamil and vehemently anti-India. Thus the populist forces
in south Sri Lanka shouted "sell-out" when the peace accord was signed.
This stage need not have arisen if the U.N.P. had sought a rational solution,
and explained to the electorate the impending Indian problem if the national
crisis was not neutralized. For neutralization it had to produce a programme
for decentralization and give certain powers to the Tamils in the North and
East and ensure the territorial integrity of the Tamil homelands without total
division of the country. It could have allayed the fears of the Sinhalese majority
and accommodated Tamil aspirations to work towards a rational bourgeois solution.
Their irrational and military approach had given India a powerful role, albeit
an apparently peaceful one, to play. This enabled it to gain a foothold in Sri
Lanka without being seen as aggressive.

On the other hand, the Tamil nationalist struggle under
the L.T.T.E. leadership had gone on a path of internal destruction and terror,
alienating and cleaving the community. It was failing in its objective by not
conceptualising the needs of a struggle whose primary objective was creating
a self-sufficient, autonomous state (as far as possible) out of an inextricably
linked Sri Lanka. It was falling short by not perceiving India's true aspirations.
The result was a failure to construct any means of dealing with the geopolitical
reality that avoided total dependency and capitulation. The L.T.T.E. could not
grasp, even at this late hour, that "Tamil Eelam" had ironically been
rendered an empty slogan, at least to some extent, by their own efforts.

The urgent need here was to work for a rational solution
to save the Tamil nation from total Indian hegemony and Sri Lankan control.
The surrender of the island to the manipulations of a regional power resulted
from the intolerance and intransigence of narrow nationalist forces on both
sides.

6.2.15 The Left: A viable Alternative ?

Last but not least of our failings was the lack of a
viable alternative to counter this narrow nationalism: a third force. And that
brings us to the Left. So far we have not outlined the evolution of this small
but politically and historically important force in both communities. But we
wish to draw out some observations. It is the failure of this force historically
that had cleared the way for the ascendency of narrow nationalism to the core
of our political life. The Left had the capacity to lead us out of this quagmire.
As early as 1947, at the congress of the Communist Party of Ceylon, a resolution
calling for regional autonomy for Tamils was put forward. In the debates against
the one language policy of S.W.R.D..Bandaranaike in 1956, the Lanka Sama Samaja
Party ( the Trotskyite left party) and the C.P.'s enlightened position on the
parity of languages and its prophetic pronouncements regarding the future -
"One language two nations, two languages one nation " - stand as landmarks
and show the role the Left could have played. It is their subsequent, capitulation
and lack of creativity that lost the initiative to nationalists.

In the contemporary neocolonialist era, the traditional
nationalists such as the T.U.L.F., because of their weak economic base, cannot
successfully lead a national struggle towards liberation without capitulating
to imperialism. They have no real independent economic power and this leads
them one way or another to become integrated and dependent on international
capital. The only way they can sustain their nationalist aspirations (stemming
from colonial and now neocolonial domination) is by adopting a rhetorical and
emotional ideology. Essentially a section of the ruling class uses this to consolidate
its power. It is apparent that only a force that represents the interests of
the broad masses of the working population, and is therefore opposed to the
economic dependence on foreign capital, could design a strategy and a concretised
programme to limit the neocolonial penetration and thus lay the foundation for
a national economic base. Because our economy was already integrated with international
capital and because of specific features of our social formation, the national
struggle required a creative and far sighted leadership for a consistent struggle
against the forces of reaction. This was not given.

The Sri Lankan Left's base has been traditionally in
the urban working class. The leadership comprised petit bourgeois intellectuals
who held a Marxist perspective. They were at one time able to predict the development
of the national question. But in time, when they opted to participate in the
parliamentary process, they had to accommodate the force of Sinhalese Buddhist
nationalism. Their entry into electoral politics abandoning all other forms
of struggle, coincided with the powerful revival of Sinhalese Buddhist nationalism
which tapped the populist consciousness of the people, especially from the rural
base. Since the Left had never represented the rural poor, this base rejected
them decisively. In this way a large section of the population was abandoned
to the bourgeois political parties' control. The Left, in a desperate attempt
to consolidate what ever was left to them, made recourse to the Sinhalese chauvinist
line themselves, further eroding their strength.

The lack of clear political leadership among the leftist
forces was not only due to their urban bias, petit bourgeois leadership and
capitulation to the parliamentary path. The crisis within the international
communist movement and the great debate in the 1960s about the future was another
factor. The split in the communist movement fragmented the left forces in Sri
Lanka. Most of the fragmented left parties dogmatically and mechanically applied
experiences of revolutionary struggles in other parts of the world and isolated
themselves from the masses in both communities. Their theoretical outlook and
internal party struggles were products of mechanical imposition and the adoption
of frameworks developed in the international communist movements. The dominance
of the Soviet Union and China in the Communist movement also played a great
role in narrowing and stereotyping the outlook of these movements.

The major extra-parliamentary left - wing party was the
Communist Party (Peking Wing), which gathered together the most radical and
militant elements of the Sri Lankan Left. Unlike the parliamentary Left, it
had a power base amongst certain sections of the oppressed castes in Jaffna
where pitched battles against caste oppression had been waged in the mid - 1960s.
The majority of left-leaning intellectuals amongst Tamils were also with the
Communist Party (Peking). It was also the first left party to build up a solid
base among the hill country plantation Tamils. Despite all this, it was also
not totally immune to Sinhalese chauvinism. It failed to comprehend the primacy
of the national question in the politics of the island and left the fighting
for the rights of the Tamils in the hands of the Tamil bourgeois parties. It
had no coherent line linking class struggle with the national question. Therefore
it could not consolidate its base amongst the hill country Tamils and the Sri
Lankan Tamils. This error in its theoretical understanding of class struggle
in the Sri Lankan context, led the party to just drift along with the events
and merely respond to the measures that the state was taking.

As a result it began to lose support and to disintegrate
in the late 1960s. The fragmentation occurred over the theoretical conflict
regarding the legitimacy and nature of armed struggle. The efficacy of armed
struggle and the political and strategic means of conducting armed activities
against the state also had to be tested and proved.

The strength of the J.V.P. lay in the fact that it adopted
the powerful weapon of Sinhalese Buddhist Nationalism. Its leader, Rohana Wijeweera
had broken away from the Communist Party. The famous "five classes"
conducted by the J.V.P. included the topic of Indian expansionism in which the
hill country Tamils were portrayed as India's fifth column. Their anti-Tamil
stance gave renewed vigour to the racist feeling of the petit-bourgeois rural
youth in the south of the country. The J.V.P. gained much ground by raising
this patriotic cry, mixed with Marxist rhetoric. This culminated in the 1971
insurrection which was crushed brutally by the regime of Mrs.Bandaranaike, who
was later on an ally of the J.V.P. for a short time during the aftermath of
signing of the Peace Accord. in 1987. The 1971 youth insurrection was limited
only to the Sinhalese South. The North and East watched it passively.

When the Tamil youth were
getting ready to launch their armed campaign against the state in the mid-1970s,
the Sri Lankan Left was nowhere to be seen. Thus the leadership of a struggle
that would create the most decisive political crisis in the history of Sri Lanka
slowly and steadily passed into the hands of narrow nationalism. And it is also
clear that it is the Left's internal weakness and contradictions that provided
the primary means for external forces to infiltrate their way to controlling
the nation.

6.3 The New Phase: Post October 1987

6.3.1 The October War: The people do not
matter

Brigadier Manjit Singh of the I.P.K.F. once told a young
man in Jaffna, “Be happy that you are alive”. Yes, in this brutal war, to be
dead was your right, to live was your privilege. In the terror stricken nights
of those October days, listening to the continual whizz of the shells, the pounding
of great big cannon, the roar of the tracked vehicle and the sharp piercing
crack of automatic weapons - to be alive seemed a privilege. Days would dawn
and nights filled with fear, would drag, not even knowing what the morrow would
bring.

The nation was on the roads, their worldly belongings
in plastic bags, their children on their hips, in the blistering noon day heat,
from refugee camp to refugee camp, from village to village, fleeing from the
withdrawing Tigers and the advancing army. This was 12 - 20 October 1987,
in the central Jaffna villages of Kopay and Urumpirai where the war was raging.
We heard the women say:

"...my children, run to safety, do not linger any
longer, tell your father that I am dead... we left our mother, shot by the army,
to die and walked away.”

“..we stood still, motionless. I gave my breast
to the baby to suck, to keep it quiet. The firing continued all around us unabated.
I thought we were as good as dead.

“..when we fled in panic from the raining shells and
firing we stepped over bodies, lying on the roads.”

“..I cycled fearfully and furiously, everywhere
along the road I could see only smashed up houses and bodies on the road - the
smell was unbearable.”

"..We lay flat among the dead, pretending
to be dead...for 18 hours.”

"...They had looted our rooms, pulled out the clothing,
we found boot marks of blood on our clothing - the boots soaked on the blood
of those who were shot on the floor below..”

"... We buried her in the garden, stood around and
sang a hymn and said a prayer...she was shot dead in the kitchen, with a half
done sambol1 still on the grinding stone.”

In those early days of the war, successful landmine attacks
took in fair numbers of Indian army jawans. During the heroics of 12 October,
29 Indian commandos had died. Many spoke with a swagger:

“The Boys are doing great. The fourth biggest military
power in the world is humbled.”

But as days advanced, what the heroics brought down was
the stamp of the Indian boot with unrestrained brutality, and the sacrificial
pyre consumed people in great numbers. Then came the shells, cannon, tank fire,
helicopter fire and even bombs from the Sri Lankan bombers. When Tiger sentry
point after sentry point withdrew without a whimper, only firing rounds of automatic
fire thereby luring the Indian army, the people were the sacrifice. The brave
talk sounded empty and hollow.

21 October was the day of the massacre at the hospital.
The Tigers were there: maybe it was a deliberate ploy on the part of the L.T.T.E..
They came in two lots. When the doctors had pleaded with them to leave, the
Tigers went away only after firing some rounds widely and leaving some weapons
inside. The Indian army came an hour or so later, at which time there was no
retaliatory fire. But they stormed the hospital and brutally killed, taking
the lives of the sick and those who were caring for the sick in and around the
area. The killing went on throughout the evening, night and the next morning.

The pattern became established - the Tigers would lure,
and sometimes kill a few jawans. Then the Indian army would run berserk - shoot,
stab, molest and rape. It was unarmed defenceless people who were paying the
price. The famed cadjan fences of Jaffna were burnt; sometimes whole settlements
of huts were burnt. Invariably houses, and public buildings were shelled or
bombed. Kondavil, Kokuvil, Urumpirai, Kopay, Manipay, Sandilipay, Pandatheruppu,
Chavakachcheri, Suthumalai....there was hardly any village to tell a different
story.

6.3.2 Terror: The Peacekeeper's Tool of
Control

These reprisals were not a momentary display of anger
at the scene of the death of a fellow jawan, nor an aspect of indiscipline of
a massive army. It seemed to be a tactical part of the strategy. A responsible
officer told some senior citizens:

“If the Tiger chaps are here, and even if one jawan dies,
we will scorch this place.”

And this was not an isolated comment; in every village,
in every street corner, the officers gave the people the same message. What
can we surmise, except that reprisal raids were part of the strategy - to give
a message of Terror. Terror is now the law of the land. It did work, it does
work: but for how long?

It was not only that the hospital operation was conducted
with callous disregard for the human cost, or that terror was a tactic and reprisal
raids were the order of the day. The entire community felt degraded as their
women faced molestation on a large scale on the excuse of checking for arms
at sentry points, in people's own homes and in the refugee camps. Raping, not
just by one, sometimes by two and in one instance by three. To scream was the
only defence the women had against this monstrosity.

Even in matters of less importance, the Indian Army showed
complete disregard. As Jaffna was being taken, they announced over the radio
that the entire population should go to three places for refuge: two schools
and the Nallur Kovil (temple). Out of these, the Nallur Kovil did not even have
sanitary facilities. At one point there were twenty to thirty thousand people
at the temple, in the drenching monsoon rain without any shelter. No functioning
hospital, no drugs. The children were dying of diarrhoea and fever. For the
Indian Army it was military action. Operations had to be done and the people
in these areas did not matter much or were just an after thought.

The people were the killing fodder not only for the occupying
Indian Army, but also for the Tigers. It seems a strange twist that the so called
leaders of the people wanted them to die defenceless. Invariably the Tigers
have used the vicinities of refugee camps as places to mount attacks from (Kokuvil
Hindu college where 34 people died is an example) and then withdraw at great
cost to the people left behind. They turned a deaf ear to the people's sufferings
and their entreaties.

They continued to lure the army, just to run away, letting
the people face the result. It was cruellest of all when they told the people
that another 500 to 1000 must die for them to have a viable international publicity
campaign. This was not an isolated instance or the statement of a group without
contact with the leadership. It was pronounced at many places and in many forms.
When the people were starving, wandering around like dogs for rice, the Tigers
issued leaflets asking the people to boycott Indian distributed food.

When the children were dying with diseases, they threatened
those who cared for them, ordering them not to issue Indian drugs. Did they
offer alternatives, so that we could eat Tiger food and give our children Tiger
drugs ? Many important and searching questions surfaced during the crisis. How
was it that the movement that claimed to be the leaders of the people, acted
with such a disregard for the people? Why did they choose this path of bull-like
collision, well knowing our defenceless position? Why did they not understand
that the task of rescuing the nation from Indian military and political domination,
from the present position of weakness, would entail enormous creativity and
not simple slogans and rhetorical, intransigent positions? One has to search
in the roots of the Tigers to explain these aspects of our history. Though many
factors contributed to this short-sightedness, some aspects of Tiger psychology
are pertinent.

6.3.3 The Messiahs and the People

The Tigers were a historical product of nationalist ideology
and saw themselves as its legitimate representatives. They grew voicing the
disenchantment of the youth, rebelling against the bankruptcy and hypocrisy
of Tamil nationalist leaders in parliamentary politics. They held in contempt
their slick lawyer politics and verbose debates and decided to replace them
with action. They emphasised an action oriented programme and built an organisation
centred on a tightly knit centralised armed group. Altruism, nationalist ardour,
determination and rebelliousness were marks of the youth who made up the core.
Dedication to the slogan of Tamil Eelam, and more so to the “Movement” was the
central axis of the organisation. Anything could be justified in the name of
the sacred “Movement”. This elevated religious sense was nurtured in all its
members. They performed daring armed actions, and propelled history by a kind
of politics of heroism - the L.T.T.E.'s politics of heroism had individual heroes
going forward, holding the banner and doing the impossible.

The guiding ideology was a nationalism of extreme narrowness,
deriving its energies from primitive instinctive loyalties - in our case to
language and race. Romantic, idealised imagery and rhetorical slogans appealing
to the anger and emotions of the nation were the core content of this ideology.
Behind the slogans, there is an emptiness - the classic example is the slogan
of “Tamil Eelam”. Though the Tigers saw themselves as the vanguard of this nation
and the leaders of an incipient separate state, they did not explore any of
the fundamentals of nation building. Nor did they expose the present social
weaknesses, or grasp the weakness of the economic base of the Tamil nation,
dependent on and inextricably linked to the South and the state machinery. Nor
did they address the contradictions arising from regional minority groups, besides
class and caste differences. They had no coherent policy to lead the people
to overcome these divisions during the struggle. Taking the case of external
factors, though they assiduously sought India's help and protection, they had
no concept of the geopolitical context and the thrust of Indian hegemony.

They had no theory or analytical framework to explore
complexities. They preferred simply formulated answers and fed the people with
simple solutions. Their simplicity had an appeal and earthiness. Their people's
politics emanated from the satiation of populist desires, fears and sentiments.
The other side of the history of such ideological groups is that their idealised,
emotional content leads to fanaticism, since the imagery is in absolutes - the
Nation, the Language, and the Movement. They are intolerant of others - other
nationalities, groups and opinions. They possess a sense of greatness and of
awe inspiring duty - which rationalises and purifies even brutality. As one
woman dissident aptly described,

“Thambi (Prabakaran, leader of the L.T.T.E.) had a sense
of history, a Messianic fervour, and this marked him out as a leader from the
start. But these characteristics in the man who had only an idealised and narrow
ideology led to fanaticism and brutality.”

This woman further exemplified both the appealing and
the reactionary sides in two quotations from Prabakaran taken from talks given
to his men:

1. “Only a good cook is a good fighter” (when
men in his movement thought cooking was degrading)

and

2. “Politics is there to explain armed action.
Not to guide it.”

A.S. Balasingham, the so-called "theoretician'"
of the L.T.T.E., played the assigned role to perfection.

The most poignant aspect of this idealized doctrine was
the heroism of suicide. The unique characteristic of the Tigers is the swallowing
of cyanide, when they are captured. This act was proclaimed to be sublime, the
utmost sacrifice to their cause. It was glorified by the nation as an unparalleled
act of dedication in the history of liberation struggles. However, cyanide signified
a suicidal urge, to escape from reality, for those who could not handle material
reality and its complexities. For an individual member this was an escape from
the reality of persecution and torture, in place of building the will to overcome.
For an organisation, this served as a means of not addressing objective reality.
Given some imagined aspirations and needs, this state of the psyche, through
a process of rationalisation, led increasingly to annihilatory ends.

It used to be wondered how a materialistic society such
as obtains in Jaffna raised up idealistic youths who were prepared to give up
everything for such a cause. Superficially, this may seem a paradox. But at
a deeper level, this materialistic urge and this narrow idealism, are two sides
of the same coin, whose workings are closely linked. People in certain circumstances,
because of the narrowness of their perception, come to identify certain privileges
and rights as being central to their existence. These values are propagated
by a dominant section which sets the cultural mores. These values themselves
have their roots in historical, social and economic factors.

When those rights and privileges that are deemed central
to the community's existence are challenged, it creates amongst those affected
a build up of idealist emotions, giving them the ability to fight back blindly
with remarkable will - power. But these idealist notions have no material base
to stand on. This leads to fanaticism.

In the case, especially, of the Jaffna Tamils, they had
developed a system where education and jobs in the lower and middle reaches
of the white collar government sector had become vitally important. Success
in this became tied up with prestige, and financially well endowed and well
connected brides. Discrimination in university admissions from 1971 challenged
a right that had become indispensable to the Tamils. This need not have been
the case, for the farming sector had begun to do well, and land, together with
bank loans, was available. But making the change in the economic base was, perhaps
for reasons of inertia, not publicly contemplated. Instead, the ideal state
of Eelam came to be thought of as the answer to Tamil ills. Amongst the first
to push this were those who were university students in the early 1970s.

Even with the liberation groups Eelam was no more than
a slogan. They made no practical moves to create a material base, that would
give flesh and blood to the concept of Eelam. For instance, none of the groups,
for all their criticisms of the old leadership and their militant activity,
had any grasp of the dimensions of the colonization problem, which was crucial
to the integrity of the homeland. They had not developed any means of resettling
Tamils in the East, nor could they do anything constructive to stop the colonisation
programme of the state. Brutal and sadistic reprisal killings of Sinhalese settlers
and villagers was their answer. This made mere existence itself, for Tamils
in those areas, terror ridden and unbearable, as Sri Lanka's Special Task Force
and the Homeguards took their revenge unresisted.

The plantation workers on the other hand, had very little
to do with the national struggle except to be targets of Sinhalese mob violence.
Almost all the groups mustered a few slogans about the plantation Tamils for
their political convenience, but did not take any great pains to incorporate
them into the struggle and left them undefended. The increasing fanaticism of
the L.T.T.E. and the transient hysteria amongst its supporters, must be seen
in the context of its unrealistic programme to achieve Eelam. The L.T.T.E.'s
political objectives and the strategic means it employed were quite divorced
from objective reality.

The narrow idealism of these groups had a specific dialectic
in their relation to people. It is often repeated that “the people support the
Tigers” - that the Tigers appeal to a cross section of the Tamil society, and
that they reflect their emotion and pride. What exactly is this relationship
of the Tigers to the people? Lenin wrote a leaflet criticising the Socialist-Revolutionary
Party, which was a merger of several Narodnik groups and circles, advocating
armed action in the absence of ground work amongst the masses. On the subject
of the theory of excitative terrorism, he wrote:

"Each time a hero engages in single combat, this
arouses in us all a spirit of struggle and courage, we are told. But we know
from the past and see in the present, that only new forms of the mass movement
or the awakening of new sections of the masses to independent struggle really
rouses a spirit of struggle and courage in all. Single combat, however, in as
much as it remains single combat waged by the Balmashoves, has the immediate
effect of simply creating a short-lived sensation, while indirectly it even
leads to apathy and passive waiting for the next bout."

The dialectic portrayed by Lenin is an apt description
of the Tigers as well. However, in the case of the Tigers, not only was there
no organic link with the people who were just passive spectators, but more importantly,
people were held in contempt. This made the Tigers refer to the people as “Sheep”.
This attitude made the Tigers disregard the people’s criticism. The disenchantment
and resentment of the people, came into the open in those dark days of October.
Ultimately as events revealed in those desperate hours, even the lives of people
lost their significance for the Tigers. The Tigers often claimed that the 658
of their members who died during the struggle were the only martyrs for the
Tamil cause. The thousands of people who died during the military offensives,
and the cadres from other groups were all non-existent for them.

In their theoretical documents, the L.T.T.E. claimed
their relationship with the people was as fish to the sea. But the sacrifice
of the people who were their protective wall against penetration by the state's
security forces; who provided the militants with food and shelter; who provided
them with hiding places against the ever hovering threat of Sri Lankan secret
services; who risked everything to succour them in those early days; was never
appreciated nor commemorated. Individuals and people were used, as the Tigers
used the deaths of ordinary civilians to campaign against the Sri Lankan state
in international fora. Martyrdom was a private preserve of the L.T.T.E.. The
offshoot of this kind of politics was that raising of the people’s consciousness,
came to mean an appeal to the most instinctive and emotional levels of existence.
As the period of Thileepan's fast showed, the Tigers aroused in the people an
emotional hysteria where people deified Thileepan and at his death were ready
to commit any act, even brutal murder and arson.

To recapitulate, L.T.T.E. had an ideology based on the
most instinctive, emotional aspects of ethnic loyalties which was intolerant
of others, and had an overwhelming sense of its own greatness. This ideology
did not provide them with the necessary apparatus to handle complexities. Therefore
they could only view the internal and external contradictions in a simple framework,
and offered only simple solutions. Their politics ascribed a marginal role for
the people - and if they mobilised the people, it was at a basic emotional level
so as to only advance the narrow cause of their movement.

6.3.4 The L.T.T.E.: India's
Prodigal Son

Against this background, if we view L.T.T.E.'s relationship
with India, its somersaults and ultimate collision, a certain clarity emerges.
The L.T.T.E.'s sense of greatness, and the feeling that they were the bearers
of the torch of Tamil nationalism, made them feel that they had the moral right
to leadership. This was enhanced by the fact that they believed they had sacrificed
the most to build a basis for the armed struggle. This perception made them
feel angry that India expected power sharing between groups and that India questioned
their supremacy. Their anti-Indianism started on that score and had little to
do with the interests of the Tamil people. Certain incidents throw light on
the contradictory position of the L.T.T.E. vis-a-vis India.

In late June 1987, when Indian officials were ceremonially
welcomed by the L.T.T.E. following the airdrop of 4 June and the aborted third
phase of Operation Liberation, the L.T.T.E. handed over a memorandum asking
the Indian government to recognize the L.T.T.E. as the sole representative of
the Tamil people and Prabakaran as their leader. The Tiger controlled media
went into euphoria stating that India would recognise only the biggest movement
- namely the L.T.T.E.. When India dropped food parcels from the air, Tiger spokesmen,
including Prabakaran, thanked India and expressed their appreciation of the
action. How ironical it is that they are now asking the people not to receive
any Indian food and are murdering individuals liaising between the I.P.K.F.
and the people for basic amenities. When the Accord was in the offing, they
denounced other movements as traitors for supporting the Accord. But later,
when Prabhakaran was taken by helicopter on 24 July 1987 to talk about the Peace
Accord by the Indian authorities, the same media again proclaimed a great victory
and announced the recognition for the L.T.T.E. as the leading movement.

The somersaults in their political line prove that their
anti-Indianism was not due to the realisation of the total potential of Indian
thrust for dominance, but was rather due to the shallow individualised politics
of supremacy of the movement and its leader. This was also an offshoot of their
intolerance of other groups and opinions. To achieve this narrow end they could
inspire their members’ blinkered dedication, to acts of extreme commitment.
Thus Thileepan the Tiger went on a suicidal fast and the nation went on a bout
of hysteria when the interim government was being planned. The propaganda line
was that the fast was being held for five broad demands. Ironically another
movement's, (E.R.O.S.'s) initiative on similar demands was obstructed by the
Tigers.

The Tigers stopped the Jaffna University students participating
in the march organised by E.R.O.S. and diverted two bus loads of people who
were going for the E.R.O.S. march to Nallur, where Thileepan was fasting. It
was quite apparent that these demands were only a front. What the L.T.T.E. wanted
was a dominant role in the interim government with executive powers, together
with the exclusion of other militant groups. These motives came out crystal
clear when Thileepan died and India played up. The L.T.T.E. was given a dominant
role and was the only militant group chosen to represent the Tamils. The L.T.T.E.
proclaimed it as a great victory. These moves of the Indian government convinced
the L.T.T.E. that India would pander to its wishes in order to put the Accord
into practice.

With this perception of their indispensability for the
success of the peace accord, and without an appreciation of even their own limitations
and the defensive position of the Tamil nation, the L.T.T.E.'s subsequent political
moves were totally estranged from reality. Their simplified thinking could not
take into account other factors such as the South, and the political existence
of the U.N.P. and J.R.. Nor could they allow for India's need to stabilize the
southern government and J.R.'s leadership, India's need to neutralise the propaganda
and politics against itself in the South, and last but not least, India's great-power
psychology.

Reggie Siriwardene and Radhika Coomarasamy in their article
bring forward a point of view on the evolution of the movements that possess
such idealised doctrines:

"The mixture of idealism, a glorified sense of self
and history and the messianic aspects contained in ethnic and religious identification
is extremely conducive to fanaticism. Fanaticism has often been considered a
situation where even though an individual's perception of reality is greatly
at variance with the objective conditions, the emotional attachment to a set
of beliefs propels him forward. Each setback instead of forcing re-evaluation
of belief has an opposite effect and pushes the individual forward to martyrdom.
Fanatic movements then lose all capacity to compromise, accommodate other points
of view and refuse to adapt to changing conditions"

This presents lucidly the contemporary history of the
Tigers. Thus it was not surprising that regardless of any future consequence,
they pushed India to the wall when they started butchering the Sinhalese civilians
in a fit of petulant anger. Therefore, in reality it was not only India's failure
as a guarantor, but also the L.T.T.E.'s failure as a leader that triggered off
the war in this way.

The Tigers' history, their theoretical vacuum, lack of
political creativity, intolerance and fanatical dedication will be the ultimate
cause of their own break up. The legendary Tigers will go to their demise with
their legends smeared with the blood and tears of victims of their own misdoings.
A new Tiger will not emerge from their ashes. Only by breaking with this whole
history and its dominant ideology, can a new liberating outlook be born.

6.3.5 Vortex of Violence: India's Catch
22

The L.T.T.E. as an organisation may be disorganised and
broken up, but in small bands they can sustain a hit and run war for a long
time. The L.T.T.E. is able to sustain this not on the basis of support, but
by imposition of terror. Though India claims that normality has returned, the
war of attrition is continuing. Even after three months the L.T.T.E.'s small
units perform sporadic armed actions and the Indian army continues its reprisal
raids, round-ups and search operations and ad hoc curfews. Normality is an illusion.
This atmosphere of terror pervades even as the new year dawns.

Along with these two features surfaces another element
- with the L.T.T.E. on the defensive, other dissident groups have surfaced.
At present in the peninsula those who have come to the front, in alliance with
Indian army, are mainly from the P.L.O.T.E., the T.E.L.O., and the E.N.D.L.F..
The disturbing fact is that most of the members who are here at present are
the remaining elements without an alternative. The dedicated members from the
P.L.O.T.E. and the T.E.L.O. have been eliminated in internal and inter-group
violence, torture and murder, or have run away in fear of their lives to far
corners of the world, as refugees or as disillusioned individuals. The elements
present here practise a politics of revenge - revenge against the L.T.T.E. for
the brutal annihilation of their movements and against the peninsula Tamils
whom they presume are supporters of the Tigers. These acts of revenge as well
as their function as informants to the Indian army, destroy all hope of any
leadership, evolving from these movements. The Eelam People's Revolutionary
Liberation Front (E.P.R.L.F.) has always claimed that its hands were not as
bloody as those of the other movements. But it has in recent times abandoned
all its avowed goals and thrown the people's interests to the winds and has
become a group of informants and proxy killers for the I.P.K.F.. Thus it seems
inevitable that the doctrine of eye for an eye will be practised to its fullest.
Though the Tigers are on the defensive, the killings by Tigers too have markedly
increased. On the eastern front we have to add the other forces, the Sri Lankan
S.T.F., and the Jihad, resulting in further instability.

In this scenario, India for its own interests tries and
will try to bring in stability by the use of its military might. This kind of
enforced equilibrium (a steady state) is not organic and will not be sustained,
because, internally, the dominant forces are inherently in conflict and the
stabilising forces are in reality weak. That is, the dominant forces of the
Sinhalese chauvinistic state, the J.V.P. and so on and the narrow nationalist
forces of the Tamils - the L.T.T.E. and other groups with basically the same
outlook on the national issue - are in conflict. The stabilising forces are
anti-racist left alliances and progressive nationalist movements. Thus the situation
will continue to erupt on and off, breaking any semblance of normality.

6.3.6 The Peace Accord and Sinhalese Chauvinism

The southern situation is deteriorating fast, and before
long, the island will be caught in a vortex of violence. The Peace Accord and
the Indian military presence have given added energies to the Sinhalese chauvinistic
forces. These populist forces have started rallying around the J.V.P.. The J.V.P.
is a group that had all along propagated a narrow nationalist ideology that
is anti-Tamil and anti-Indian. Its anti-Tamil sentiments are such that it does
not recognize the depth of oppression of the Tamils and thus advocates a “no
concession” position, apart from putting forward an abstract solution to the
Tamil problem, called “rights.” At present it is not rhetorically and violently
anti-Tamil for tactical reasons. But its abstract and meaningless solutions
and its theoretical documents show its anti-Tamil racism clearly. In recent
times it has successfully revived its armed action to keep in line with its
ideology. Its rhetoric is flamboyantly romantic and its actions are violent.
The J.V.P. talks about social issues as well as unemployment, deprivation, degeneration
of society and conditions of living. The analysis is in a simple framework and
the answers are simple such as “Women must bear children.. therefore a revolution
must occur”, and the solutions equally naive. However, many in the South feel
that the J.V.P. reflects the legitimate rights of the Sinhalese people and a
cross section of southern society is capitulating to this view.

The J.V.P.'s real class base has been shown to arise
from the small producer. An analysis of the prevalent mode of production in
the Sinhalese rural areas shows that, in the agricultural base of the island
and the small peasant economy, there are numerous strata of proprietor class.
And this class is the main bearer of Sinhalese chauvinist ideology. Because
of the pre-capitalist nature of the rural economy, the rural proletariats have
assimilated the illusions of the petty producers. The urban-biased left parties
had long abandoned the rural proletarians to the bourgeois parties' political
control. This further reinforced chauvinist ideology amongst the rural population.
Now with increasing neocolonial penetration in the South, the rural proletariat
is facing a worsening economic situation. This class is therefore understandably
looking for alternative leadership. The J.V.P. provides the right blend of egalitarianism,
patriotism and chauvinism.

Thus the chances of the U.N.P. continuing in a bourgeois
democratic framework, holding fair elections on a regular basis, are pretty
slim. On the other hand, Ronnie de Mel (the Finance Minister in the previous
government, who subsequently resigned from his post) argues the case for a rational
bourgeois solution. He warns against the military option, urges the party to
go to the electorate and explain to the people the Peace Accord, and gather
strength and isolate the J.V.P. and other chauvinistic elements inside and outside
the U.N.P.. Opposed to this option and to the pro-Peace Accord tendency is the
U.N.P.'s populist wing. The rational option serves the interests of a small
section, big business, entrepreneurs and other compradore sections. The populist
aspect is espoused by no less a personality than the President, then Prime Minister,
Mr.Premadasa. Therefore the U.N.P. is facing an internal power crisis as well.

The President represents, and depends on, the chauvinists
for support and thus could only turn to the electorate and populist forces to
resolve the internal power struggle. Therefore he is directly appealing to the
ordinary masses with his grand grass roots programmes tainted with anti-Indian
populist politics. Ultimately this may lead him to alliances with other chauvinistic
forces outside the broad front. Such alliances, will have far reaching consequences
for the U.N.P. as a parliamentary party.

Brute force and repressive
legislation are likely to be used to smash all opposition. A sign of the developing
sinister tendencies is the paramilitary training of the U.N.P.'s rank and file,
forming units referred to as the “Green Tigers”. These units are coming to resemble
the death squads of the Marcos regime. Against this background the Sri Lankan
military aspirations and their relation to Indian interests also play a part
in determining future developments.

Though the evolution of political
forces in the two nations look mutually exclusive, the whole process is inter-linked.
The J.V.P. and the L.T.T.E. are groups which, although having developed in different
backgrounds, profess similar ideologies, and have a common framework and parallel
social bases in the two ethnic groups. They share an intolerance of other opinions
and other groups, and they both indulge in brutal murders and torture of their
own dissidents and of members of rival groups. Many who give their overt or
tacit support to the J.V.P., try to forget these aspects. It will grow into
demonic proportions when the movement grows larger - a historical phenomenon
parallel to that of the L.T.T.E.. As the Tamil community was to learn bitterly,
when the necessary checks are not made and questions are not asked in the formative
days, the people would later have no control. Massacres went on for days and
our history was stained with the blood of our own people when the L.T.T.E. turned
its guns on the T.E.L.O., the E.P.R.L.F., the P.L.O.T.E. and ordinary civilians;
when the T.E.L.O. turned its violence on dissidents and ordinary civilians,
or when the P.L.O.T.E. tortured and murdered its own dissidents. Similarly in
the South, this brutal tendency will add to the U.N.P.'s state violence for
sectarian and private ends.

Furthermore, it should be realised that it would be incorrect
to believe that by the espousal of narrow nationalism, India's dominance would
be contained, or conversely that Indian penetration would contain the violent
rise of Sinhalese chauvinism. Both are interlocking phenomena. The J.V.P.'s
simplistic “India bashing” does not take into account, the geopolitical reality,
India's aspirations, and as a militant Sinhalese nationalist group with a chauvinistic
ideology, its own geographic constraints. This might provide a basis for further
entrenchment of India in the Tamil area and increasing domination of the North
and East, and later also of the South. And on the other hand, increasing India's
role in Sri Lanka's internal political life would give further impetus to narrow
nationalist movements in the South.

A good example is found in the current situation
in Trincomalee. The Indian military presence in Trincomalee removed the patronage
of the Sri Lankan security forces and the state machinery given to the Sinhalese.
When the patronage was removed, the Sinhalese, feeling vulnerable and fearful,
fled to refugee camps. The indigenous Tamils retaliated for the years of terror
at the hands of the Sinhalese. Therefore the Sinhalese refugees fear to resume
their earlier life pattern. The Sri Lankan security forces who were the patrons
of Sinhalese violence in the Trincomalee district have voiced their frustration
to foreign journalists; and Sinhalese refugees are even more rabidly anti-Tamil
and anti-Indian, making them fertile ground for fresh J.V.P. recruitment. On
the other hand the I.P.K.F. seems to be the only guarantor of the Tamil people's
safety in Trincomalee. The Indian military has also successfully marginalised
other Tamil militant movements, making the Tamil people totally dependent on
Indian authority. Against this backdrop, the Indian army is seen to move heavy
armour to the China bay area, entrenching its defence position.

Therefore in this complex interaction of forces India's
role, though it seems to be external, is totally interlocked. Western foreign
policy writers have tended to view the Indian role in terms of regional crisis
management. India appears to have gained a foot-hold into the territory and
politics of its southern neighbour in a role formally approved by the West and
the Soviet Union as peace keepers and crisis managers.

But India has enmeshed itself in a difficult situation
here. Its most important objectives cannot be achieved without what seems to
be the most elusive phenomenon - stability. India needs stability for its gains
in defence and economy. Furthermore it is the essential justification for being
on this island. Ideally, India would like stability with preservation of the
unitary state structure in Sri Lanka, and the realisation of the legitimate
rights of Tamils with India as guarantor.

However, in the North and the East, the L.T.T.E. is going
to last a long time. The operation to disarm the Tigers caused much civilian
damage in both life and property. Inter-group rivalry and senseless murders
are a regular occurrence. The local population is terrorised, living in a political
vacuum. Despite pledges the U.N.P. will not be able to bring off easily measures
to alleviate the Tamil nation's problems, without endangering its political
existence. Thus, India might have to back-track on many issues regarding the
Tamils, or try strong arm tactics. Either way it will spur the growth of narrow
nationalism and anti-Indian bitterness amongst both Sinhalese and Tamils.

Thus India will not be able to solve the conflict. It
has not only triggered off volatile and destructive tendencies which have lain
dormant, but also has this time managed to get enmeshed in them. India may not
gain a reputation as model arbitrator from the International community, but
may rather be tolerated as an immature regional power as are most big powers
of this world.

6.4 A note on Economic Factors in the

Regional Crisis

For persons with an intellectual bent, the situation
in Sri Lanka provides an interesting case study in terms of the interaction
between politics and economy. The Sri Lankan ruling class, since independence,
through various state structures and processes, have attempted to consolidate
power. While making the changes from a British type parliamentary system to
the creation of the executive presidency, and from welfare state, centralised
state capitalism to a fully open economy, the different factions of the ruling
class attempted to consolidate power and accumulate wealth. In the developed
capitalist countries, the various forms of parliamentary democracy negotiate
power for the ruling elite and create a sense of complacency among other classes,
thereby ensuring the stability of the system. Being on the periphery of the
world capitalist system, dealing with fluctuating markets for what are often
cash-crops, and having low industrial development and stagnant rural agricultural
sectors, parliamentary democracy has resulted in a less stable mode of entrenching
the system to the sole benefit of the ruling class. The ruling class' super-exploitation
could not be offset by affluence acquired through colonialism or neocolonialism,
as was possible in the developed nations. This exploitation is naked and the
masses of people in its home base are deprived. Within this context, the need
to hold on to power through parliamentary democracy in a situation of meagre
resources, has led the ruling class to adopt from Western economic theorists
such concepts as "trickle-down" development. The satisfaction of the
electoral power base is obtained by sidestepping real issues dealing with the
economy, and crusading on secondary issues that have emotional content. Thus,
in Sri Lanka, electoral victory and control of the state apparatus was obtained
only through the satiation of the aspirations of the majority community. These
aspirations arose from a belief that their ills were fundamentally to do with
minorities, race, language and religion. Such campaign issues always required
the formation of alliances with the petit bourgeoisie. Since the ideology of
the petit bourgeois small-producer dominated the widespread rural areas of the
Sinhalese South, this class played a pivotal role in the parliament. As shown
earlier, the triumph of the narrow nationalist ideology, whether in the context
of a fully fledged open economy or in a protective nationalist state capitalism,
was eminently evident.

This sort of dependent economies
lack the buffer to absorb the shocks of internal subversion. From the early
days, armed conflicts, whether the 1971 J.V.P. insurrection, or the current
J.V.P. subversion, brought about disarray in the political situation and a downward
plunge for the economy. This phenomenon is more or less due to the economic
instability of the dependent capitalist system and its paradoxical dependence
on narrow nationalist ideologies. Thus, although the U.N.P. was committed to
the market economy in toto, it could never sell itself as a paradise for multinational
investment. Its free-trade zones never took off and no large scale investment
took place, making Colombo a failed "paradise city," and tourism soon
felt the ill effects. After a decade of self-destructive civil war, the ruling
party tried to listen to its capitalist sensibilities and neutralise ethnic
tensions. This resulted in a backlash of petit bourgeois nationalism in the
South and a revival, with new vigour, of the J.V.P..

In a bid to stave off the violent situation created
by the militancy, and to ensure political and economic stability, the ruling
party replaced the faction within itself that was committed to a capitalist
programme with the faction that is populist and narrow nationalist. That is,
the Premadasa faction, with its grand grass-roots programmes, replaced the
more Westward looking Jayewardene faction. However,despite these many political
manipulations and machinations, the changes in the legislature and the state
structure, have not provided the local ruling classes with their political or
economic stability. Thus, the economic vagaries of the dependent capitalist
state, its lack of ability in offsetting internal dissent, and the precarious
nature of its economy, together undermine and frustrate the political consolidation
of its ruling classes. As such, the Sri Lankan bourgeoisie are unable to provide
a solution to the present crisis and are in a state of disarray. Moreover, the
situation reflects the economic and political realities of pushing an open
economic programme and unleashing market forces in the peripheries of the world
capitalist system.

Again it is the neocolonial situation with its economic
and geopolitical realities, that would prove to be the important challenge to
the J.V.P.'s narrow political vision. It is fairly obvious from the activities
of the J.V.P. that it aspires to capture state power. Its present simplistic
slogans and bravado against Indian hegemony and its political and economic programmes,
which do not account for the realities of a country locked in the mesh of the
world capitalist system, will be exposed if the J.V.P. ever assumes power. It
would have to either collapse or compromise. And then the true nature of its
petit bourgeoisie class interests would be exposed.

Thus, again, we seem to arrive at a historical
dead end. The bourgeoisie, of whatever race or faction, cannot hold power without
an effective alliance with the petit bourgeoisie. The petit bourgeoisie, although
overtly seeming to be progressive in their resistance to domination and neo-colonialism,
given the nature of their class base, have always compromised or taken a path
of adventurous self-destruction. While the bourgeoisie brought about various
degrees of neocolonialist penetration, thereby bleeding the people, the petit
bourgeois ideology of narrow nationalism, drawing on a brutal culture of violence,
cripples the people's moral strength and weakens organised resistance against
oppression. Furthermore, the political tunnel vision of the petit bourgeoisie
is leading the country into abortive episodes that seem to pave the way for
more domination, more deprivation, and tragedy.

One can see that although the self-image and ambitions
of the Indian ruling class are great, and India's need to assert its dominance
in the region has been fashioned out meticulously, its economic and political
situation as a dependent capitalist country at the vagaries of the world capitalist
system makes its involvement in a war of attrition both detrimental to the ruling
class' power perception and debilitating to its economy. Nevertheless, its wars
are beneficial to its expanding defence industry and to the ruling class which
controls power. It is also an avenue for sharpening the oppressive machinery
of the military, and the C.R.P.F., making them more efficient in quelling internal
subversion. Thus there might be short term gains for its ruling class, although
in the long run, due to its dependence and uneven development, that it will
be able to absorb the shocks of prolonged conflict is doubtful. The enormous
loss would be to the millions of India's oppressed and poor, for whom this brings
more dangers and deprivation and has no meaning.[Top]